VOGONS


First post, by Mike 01Hawk

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I've got a Diamond Stealth 2 meg SE in my old Dell GXpro box I just got.

Well, Windows98se installed okay, but it's been locking up on me frequently.

I notice weird little white pixel dots around my desktop icons. If I drag a window over them or refresh they can go away.

One time all I did was boot up the machine, and hit right click/refresh like 5 times in a row and *poof* the pc locked up, screen is still showing.. but it's 'locked'.

Oh, forgot to mention..I don't belive it's locked up on me at all when I'm in Safe Mode...640x480 @ 16 colors. Hmm... maybe that's it.

Oh and I dl'ed the update drivers for the SE off Diamond's own web site... but windows 98 seems to think it's drivers are better and those are the ones I'm using right now... it lists the vid card as a S3 Trio32/64 PCI (732/764)

And I can run it @ 1024x768, but I belive it's interlaced cause you can see all these dark lines, so I'm running it @ 800x600 when not in safe mode.

Is it Matrox Millenium (which version btw?) or Voodoo3 time? (again which V3 version?) Why not Voodoo4 or Voodoo5?

I can't decide which to get.

I have an old Voodoo1 card. I'm gearing my old dos machine mainly for adventure type games, and the old Doom/Quake/Heretic days... not gonna really push it past Quake2/FPS, I guess that's what my main box is for.

So... which vid card and why? Thks

Dell Optiplex Gxpro: Built solely so I could re-live my SB16 days properly with newly acquired sound pieces: MT-32, SCB-55, and DB50xg 😀

Reply 1 of 5, by Mike 01Hawk

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Hmmm... running it in normal mode @ an abismal 640x480@16 colors and it's working okay soooo far. Guess it really is the vid card 🙁

Dell Optiplex Gxpro: Built solely so I could re-live my SB16 days properly with newly acquired sound pieces: MT-32, SCB-55, and DB50xg 😀

Reply 3 of 5, by Miki Maus

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You should try using Diamond's drivers and see if the problem shows up again. As for the upgrade I would prefer Voodoo3 because of compatibility with older games, speed and drivers, or a combo Voodoo1 (that you already have) and some 2D card based on S3 ViRGE/325 which also offers great compatibility with older games.

Reply 4 of 5, by 5u3

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According to the symptoms you described, it could well be the video card (the erratic white pixels are a good hint).
Old cards often suffer from poor contacts - not only in the PCI slots, but on the board itself. If your S3 card has socketed RAM chips, press them firmly into the sockets, maybe the problem is gone then.
The drivers could also be an issue. I'd suggest trying out the standard "vanilla" drivers from the chipset manufacturer (S3 Graphics in your case) instead of the retail company drivers, because these often were "optimized" for good benchmark results, but can cause trouble in real-world situations. S3 hosts the old reference drivers here.

If you want to get a new card for your retro machine, I'd recommend a Voodoo3 PCI card. It's cheap and easy to obtain, and has everything needed for old game compatibility. It supports VBE 2.0 (although not perfectly) and Glide (about as fast as Voodoo2 SLI). Of course, a V4/V5 has more features like support for big textures and the famous 3dfx FSAA, but it might be difficult to get the PCI version.

Reply 5 of 5, by Mike 01Hawk

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Just to update, it WAS the vid card, I swapped another 2meg'r in and all is well 😁

Dell Optiplex Gxpro: Built solely so I could re-live my SB16 days properly with newly acquired sound pieces: MT-32, SCB-55, and DB50xg 😀